Method and system for tracking telephone calls

ABSTRACT

A system for tracking telephone calls made in response to advertising campaigns in electronic or other media is provided. The system permits an advertiser to associate specific and distinct telephone numbers with associated advertising campaigns. The system further modifies advertiser-provided information in response to the advertising campaign to which a potential customer responds, and includes the associated telephone number in the modified advertiser information. The system processes telephone calls made to the selected telephone numbers, and provides reports to advertisers of call data associated with the respective advertising campaigns.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

Priority is claimed herein to Provisional Application No. 60/865,671, filed Nov. 14, 2006, which is incorporated by reference in full as set forth herein.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to a system and method for tracking telephone calls, in particular the invention relates to a method and system for assigning telephone numbers to advertising campaigns and tracking the efficacy of the advertising campaigns.

INTRODUCTION

With the advent of interne based advertising, it has become possible to track the efficiency of electronic advertising campaigns with an accuracy hitherto unknown. Advertisers find electronic advertising to be one medium in which the effectiveness of advertising can be measured in such a way as to appropriately budget advertising expenditures to target the most effective types of advertising placements. It would be desirable to extend this sort of precision measurement to advertising campaigns involving telephone contacts with potential customers and leads, and to measure response rates for campaigns utilizing telephone contact, whether in electronic, print, broadcast or, any media.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the present invention, there are provided methods and systems for tracking telephone call contacts with potential customers in the course of advertising campaigns in various media. In one embodiment thereof, there is provided a system for presenting advertisements to a potential customer in which the advertisement contains a telephone number that has been selected by an advertiser in association with a specific campaign to which the advertisement relates. The system includes means for permitting an advertiser to assign respective telephone numbers to any of a plurality of such campaigns. In the case of Internet advertising, the system includes a server for retrieving an electronic contact mechanism, such as a web page or interactive form, and inserting an associated telephone number in dependence upon the advertising campaign to which the user has responded by requesting the electronic contact mechanism. The system further includes a telephone interface and call handling system for establishing telephonic contact with the prospective customer, and for recording the telephone number used for such contact; and a logging system for recording the telephone number employed for the contact, and hence the associated campaign in response to which the contact was established. Furthermore, recording and logging system includes a report generator by which the advertiser may access reports based upon the data recorded by the recording and logging system.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Additional features of the invention shall be made apparent in the following detailed description, read in connection with the attached figures in which:

FIG. 1 is a schematic view of the telephone call tracking system in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram of a method carried out by the telephone tracking system of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram showing operation of a web proxy of the telephone tracking system of FIG. 1.

FIG. 4 is a functional block diagram showing a method carried out using a customer contact information form presented by the telephone tracking system of FIG. 1.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of a method carried out by the telephone tracking system of FIG. 1.

FIG. 6 is an illustration of a graphical client interface provided by the telephone tracking system of FIG. 1.

FIGS. 7-12 are illustrations of reports generated by the telephone tracking system of FIG. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention relates to a method and system for tracking telephone calls made to assigned phone numbers associated with advertising campaigns. The system comprises a computer server comprising various engines and platforms for effecting the tracking of telephone calls assigned to various advertising campaigns.

Referring now to FIG. 1, the system 100 of the present invention comprises a server 102. The server 102 is in communication with a database 104. The database 104 is a collection of data that is organized so that its contents can easily be accessed, managed and updated for storing data utilized in the practice of the invention. The system 100 further includes a recording server for recording and retrieving message data, as described in greater detail below.

The server 102 is connected to the Internet via an Internet service provider or ISP 106. Typically, the server 102 is a computer, including software package(s), that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. More specifically, the server 102 is a computer that manages and shares web based applications accessible anytime from any computer 110 connected to the Internet.

The server 102 may also optionally include a proxy web server 108 for proxying documents, such as HTML based web documents, on the Internet. In the present invention, users may access the system 100 of the present invention via the Internet or by some other network protocol, for example through the proxy server 108 or directly through the web server 102.

The system 100 may include a telephony interface 112, such as the ASTERISK open-source telephone platform or PBX server. The telephony interface may, for example, assign and configure phone numbers and otherwise handle and transmit of voice data received by the system 100 and process phone calls through a telephonic connector such as a voice gateway 114 to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) 116 which includes analog and digital voice data.

Users 120 are able to access the system 100 via the Internet. The user 120, may utilize a computer 110 or other web enabled computing device to access the system 100 via the web server 102 or proxy server 108 in various ways known to those skilled in the art, such as by use of any suitable Internet browsing software application. Users may also access the system 100 by use of a suitable telephone or telephonic device 122 capable of interfacing with the PSTN 116. Such devices include, but are not limited to voice telephone, VoIP phone devices, cellular phones, PDAs or the like as known to those skilled in the art. The user accesses the voice PBX/IBR server 112 by using telephone device 122 across the PSTN 116 via the voice gateway 114 as known to those skilled in the art.

The system also includes a recording server 124 for the recording and storing of data, such as voice data initiating from telephone calls placed by users 120 accessing the system telephonically, as set forth in greater detail below.

Turning now to FIG. 2, the operation of the system 100 includes four phases: the assigning and configuring phase 202, the displaying phase 204, the tracking phase 206, and the report generation phase 208.

The assigning and configuring phase 202 includes assigning and configuring one or more phone numbers residing in the PBX platform to various advertising campaigns. Typically, the assigned phone numbers may originate from blocks of phone numbers pre-purchased from one or more phone carriers. In the assigning and configuring phase 210, one or more phone numbers are assigned and configured in the database 104 to correspond to one or more advertising campaigns, as described in greater detail below.

Optionally, prior to or concurrent with the assignment and configuration phase 202, the assigned phone numbers may be tested in a phone test phase 211. In one form of the invention, before a phone number is assigned to an advertising campaign, the phone number is cleaned to avoid unwanted phone traffic due to previous use of the phone numbers by previous users. This cleaning procedure may employ any suitable mechanism for limiting such unwanted use, such as monitoring phone traffic over an interval of time to determine if unwanted use falls below a defined threshold.

The displaying phase 204 includes displaying the assigned phone number(s) via various media to recipients, such as user 120, of an advertising campaign(s), as described in greater detail below. The customer 120 may initiate a phone call, via telephone device 122, to the system 100.

The tracking phase 206 includes tracking of phone calls made to the displayed phone number(s). A user 120 calls the phone number displayed in phase 204, proceeds to calling step 203 and accesses the system 100 via the telephone interface. The phone is then routed through the phone flow 250 of the system 100, as shown in FIG. 5 and described in greater detail below. In the phone flow 250, the voice data of the phone call can be recorded by the recording server 124. In addition, the system 100 records in a log, which may be kept in database 104, that a user 120 has called the displayed phone number. Once the data has been logged by the system 100 at step 207, the phone call may optionally be transparently transferred or passed in steps 252 to the advertiser 320 of the advertising campaign for further processing by the advertiser, or otherwise terminated.

In the report generation phase 208, real time reports can also be generated based on the data collected by the system 100. These reports may be made accessible to an advertiser 320 of the advertising campaign. The recorded data can include such identifying data as the caller ID information, the number called by the user, the time the call occurred, the duration of the call, and other information, along with the recorded call itself.

Preferably, the reports can be generated by the system and viewed over the Internet by the advertiser 320, upon access to the server 102, of the system 100, using suitable statistical report means known to those skilled in the art. Sample embodiments of reports so generated are shown in FIGS. 7-12.

The advertiser may assign different telephone numbers to each of multiple advertising campaigns, to permit the advertiser to measure the relative response of such campaigns. The invention contemplates that for each advertising campaign, phone numbers are assigned by the advertiser based on various criteria, described in greater detail below, and these assigned phone numbers are displayed to user 120 based upon the campaign the user is viewing. The display can be any suitable media on which phone numbers can be communicated to the customer, such as on a web page, a document, a brochure, a radio, advertisement, a newspaper, periodical, or journal, a podcast, a telephone call, and the like.

During the configuration phase 202, phone numbers are assigned to advertising campaigns. Each advertising campaign includes a defined transaction for which the advertiser 320 of the campaign desires to track information. For example, the advertiser 320 may want to track information relating to which of several particular advertising campaigns may have resulted in a call from a user. In one example, the advertising campaign may be a Internet accessible web page displaying one or more phone numbers in which each phone number is assigned based on which Uniform Resource Locator (URL) referred the lead, which search engine the lead used, which search term(s) or keyword(s) were used, and/or other criteria.

Turning now to FIG. 3, one preferred form of the system is shown to illustrate the operation of the system 100. In this example, a phone number 302 has been assigned to a particular advertising campaign. In this advertising campaign, the phone number 302 will be displayed on a web page which is accessible to a potential user 120 via the Internet. In one embodiment, it is contemplated that the web page will be based on an existing web page 306 that resides on server 310. The existing web page 306 may be an existing web page 306 of the advertiser, such as the home page or contact page of the advertiser 320. It is contemplated that the existing web page 306 contains at least one existing phone number 308, of the client advertiser 320. In order to track responses to an advertisement associated with the campaign, the system 100 operates to replace the existing phone number 308 with campaign phone number 302 while otherwise retaining all the remaining data and formatting of the web page 306. A resulting web page is created and displayed to the potential customer or user 220, containing the assigned campaign phone number 302 instead of the existing phone number 308. Otherwise the web pages presented to the user and the web pages 306 of the advertiser are substantially identical.

To accomplish insertion of the campaign telephone number, the proxy server 108 is used to automatically modify and display the assigned campaign phone number 302 on the pre-existing static or dynamically generated webpage 306. In some embodiments of the automatic modification and display is accomplished as follows. The proxy server 108 receives an http request 328 from a user 120 in response to an advertisement associated with the advertising campaign. The system 100 analyzes various request parameters in step 222, such as the request URL, the http referrer, cookies, and the like to look up the stored configuration data 228 for a particular ad campaign to determine a new web URL and set of page modifications rules 226. The configuration data 228, including the telephone number 302 is stored in the database 104.

A request 372 is then made by the proxy server 108 to the advertiser's server 310 for the existing web page 306 which is intended to be modified. The web page 306 is thereby fetched 324 over the Internet and the modification rules 226 are applied to it and a new URL is assigned to the modified web page 304. The new web page 304 is generated by referencing stored modification rules 226, and modifying the existing web page 306 to display the assigned phone number 302 in place of the existing phone number 308.

For example, in a first advertising campaign a first phone number may be displayed if the user's referring URL is a particular URL corresponding to a link presented in an advertisement. In a second advertising campaign a second phone number may be displayed for a different referring URL, such as the URL of a particular search engine. In a third advertising campaign, a third phone number may be assigned if a particular search term was used to locate the existing web page. These rules are described in greater detail below. When a user 120 calls one of the assigned numbers, the system 100 is capable of determining which advertising campaign generated the lead based upon the phone number utilized by the user 120. For example, if the user 120 initiated a phone call using the second phone number, it would be known that the user viewed the display of second phone number in connection with the second advertising campaign. For example, a customer referring URL may indicate that the customer's http request 328 shows that the customer has utilized a particular search engine, such as GOOGLE®.

Once the page modification rules are applied to the existing web page 306 by the proxy server 108, and the page is thus modified, the resulting modified web page 304 is delivered and displayed 326 to the potential customer 120. A typical modification is that one or more contact phone numbers 308 on the existing page 306 may be replaced with the assigned phone number 302 so that when the user calls the assigned phone number 302, he calls the system 100 of the present invention instead of the existing phone numbers 308. Once in the system 100, the customer phone call can be tracked and the passed on to the client 320 in due course.

In one form of the invention, a cookie 330 can be delivered to the customer 120 with various cookie parameter(s) to facilitate future requests, as is well known in the art.

In another form of the invention, the existing web page 306 may be modified to contain javascript. When a user requests the web page 306 directly from server 310, server 310, the javascript executes and call the system 100. The request analysis 222 may analyze the request as described above. The HTML of the web page 306 is modified to replace the phone number 308 with phone number 302 on the client side, as is known to those skilled in the art. The modified web page 302 is then delivered 326 to the customer 120, as described above. In this way the use of the proxy server 108 is eliminated.

In FIG. 4, another way of entering the system 100 of the present invention is illustrated. In this form of the invention a form 402 is provided for a potential customer or user 220 to enter in a phone number 404. A user 220 activates the form 402, by activating the input element 406 of a HTML form, and the customer's phone number 404 is transmitted to system 100. It should be understood that other means of collecting user information and transmitting same are also contemplated by the present invention such as those known by those skilled in the art. The input request 406 is transmitted to the server 108, and the system 100 generates a contact event 410, for example a telephone call via the system PBX 112 to that user's phone 412 via the PSTN. Contact is made with the user 220, and the user 220 is placed in the phone flow, as described below.

The system of the invention contemplates that the step of automatically modifying existing web pages may be customized to include and/or exclude certain phone numbers on the existing web page. For example, the modification rules can specifically include certain phone numbers, such as the main number or the sales number of the advertising campaign client or exclude certain numbers, such as the sales or parts numbers of the advertising campaign client.

Additionally, the assigned phone numbers may be displayed as graphic images, such as jpeg images, instead of as hyperlinks when the phone numbers are displayed as HTML web-based content. In this embodiment, an existing phone number is replaced with pre-generated or a generated-on-the-fly graphic images to create the displayed web page.

The server 108 includes an application that runs a routine for replacing the existing phone numbers with the assigned numbers on the fly based on algorithms used for identifying and parsing phone numbers in html code. When the advertiser 320 assigns telephone numbers to respective campaigns, the advertiser 320 may also identify telephone numbers within the existing web page 306 to be replaced by the system 100.

Tuning now to FIG. 5, the phone flow 500 of the system 100 will now be described. When a user 220 places a phone call to a phone number assigned by the system 100, or requests a call back, the user 220 enters the phone flow 500. It will be recognized that the inclusion and sequence of steps set forth below will depend on whether the call is inbound or outbound.

Before answering or making a call, the system 100 uses the incoming call data for the user's 220 phone call identification to initiate the phone flow routine in step 502. In step 504, the system 100 determines if the phone number through which the customer has reached the system has been assigned to an advertising campaign. If the phone number has not been assigned, the system runs an unassigned phone number application in step 506 and terminates the phone call in step 590.

If the system determines that the phone number is assigned in step 504, the system determines if the phone number has been blacklisted in step 508. For example, a phone number may be blacklisted if the advertiser 320 has disabled receipt or making of certain telephone calls for the corresponding campaign. If the phone number has been blacklisted, the call is disconnected in step 510 and is terminated in step 590.

If the phone number has not been blacklisted in step 508, the system answers the phone call in step 512, and ring tones are played in step 514. In step 516, the routine determines if the call is being received within business hours. If not, then a first file is retrieved from the recording server and played to the user in step 516 a. The first file may be, for example, a recording of a first voice message provided by the advertising campaign client, such as an “after hours” message. If the call is being received within business hours, a second file is played in step 516 b. The second file may be, for example, a recording of second voice message provided by the advertiser, such as the advertisers normal business hours message. Optionally, the playing of the message may be skipped in either of steps 516 a and/or 516 b.

In embodiments where the advertiser 320 desires to receive calls from the user 220, after steps 516 a or 516 b, the system 100 attempts to pass the call to the advertiser's telephone interface configured to receive contact from a user 220 in step 518. If the attempt fails then the call is disconnected in step 520 and passed to the call termination step 590.

If the connection is successful in step 520, then the call proceeds through the advertising's client's call system in step 522. For example, the client 310 may talk with the user 220, the user 220 may be directed to the client's DISA system or operator, or the like.

Once step 522 has completed, the call is disconnected in step 524 and passed to the call termination step 590 whereupon the phone flow routine is completed.

It should be understood that the system 100 may include various applications initiated after step 520, or after step 524. An answer application may be present after step 520, and/or a call wrap-up application may be present after step 524. These applications are known to those skilled in the art.

The phone flow routine permits the system 100 to transparently log data from a customer initiated call and transparently and seamlessly transfer the phone call to the advertising client. To the potential customer, it should appear that the call is being placed directly with the advertising client.

Turning now to FIG. 6, a user interface 600 is provided to enable a campaign advertiser 320 to make such rule modifications and/or to assign phone numbers to various ad campaigns as desired. An advertiser 320 can use the interface to configure various advertising campaigns and to associate phone numbers to specific advertising campaigns pursuant to the assignment and configuration phase 202, described above in connection with FIG. 2.

Using the interface 600, the advertiser 320 assigns an individual advertising campaign 602 to an individual phone number 604. (These phone numbers 604 become phone numbers 302 during a user call.) For example, a search term or keyword can constitute a first campaign and be assigned to a first phone number. An adword can be assigned to a second campaign. Referrals from a particular search engine, such as GOOGLE® or YAHOO!® can be assigned to a third campaign. Using the interface 600, the advertiser 320 can also indicate which phone number 606 that the system is to transfer calls to in step 518 of the phone flow. (These phone numbers represent the existing phone numbers 308). In addition, the advertiser 320 can indicate certain phone numbers, such as fax numbers, service or parts numbers, and the like, to exclude during the page modification algorithm 226 process.

FIG. 6 also shows the interface 610 which can be used to insert a graphic image of phone number 302 as described above.

Turning now to FIGS. 7-12, the system also includes a way to communicate data logged via the system 100 to the advertiser 320. During the report generation phase 208, the data logged by the system 100 can be displayed to the advertiser 320. In the embodiment of the invention shown in FIGS. 7-12, that data is an HTML web page that is accessible to the advertiser via the Internet. For each call made to a phone number 604 associated with a campaign 602, data is logged and collected. For example, this data may include the time and date of the call, the phone number called from, the assigned phone number called, the area code of the customer, the associated zip code of the customer, the status of the call, and the like. This data can be presented in various textual or graphical forms to the client as is known to those skilled in the art. Such reports are illustrated in FIGS. 7-12.

In an embodiment of the invention the system includes a marketplace for advertising. A customer, such as a business owner, provides advertising for his business. The system 100 is used, as described above, to assign a phone number to this advertising. The ad with the assigned number is displayed to a potential customer on a medium of a publisher, such as a web page. The ad can be displayed based on various parameters known in the advertising industry to target the potential customer. Users can then call the assigned phone numbers. Call data is tracked as set forth above and passed on to the customer. It is contemplated that the advertiser will pay the publisher for each lead generated in this manner and that revenue can be divided between the publisher and the operator of the system based on agreed upon terms.

It is further contemplated that the customer can provide a bid price of the amount he is willing to spend along with predefined limits and the various publishers can provide asking prices they are willing to accept for publishing the ad. In this way a marketplace for telephonic response advertising can be effected and tracked and revenue distributed using the system of the present invention.

The operation of the system 100 will now be described. Using the interface 600 the advertiser 320 assigns telephone numbers 604 to various ad campaigns 602. For example, a manufacturer of widgets sets up the first advertising campaign to be a print advertisement and assigns it to a first telephone number. The second campaign is set up for the keyword “widget” and is assigned a second telephone number. A third ad campaign is set up to track referrals from the search engine GOOGLE® and is assigned a third telephone number. The widget client associates all three advertising campaigns with his company's sales department telephone number. The widget client has a webpage accessible from the Internet at URL www.widgets.com that displays the sales department telephone number. Lastly, the widget client prints up a sales brochure which is massed mailed to ten thousand potential customers. The brochure has the first assigned telephone number printed on it instead of the company sales telephone number.

Potential customers receiving the sales brochure and who are interested in purchasing widgets will call the first assigned telephone number since it is displayed as the widget company's sales number. Alternatively, the widget client could have run a radio or television advertisement that communicated the first assigned telephone number to potential clients.

Other potential customers performing an Internet search for any search term that is associated with the Widget company using the search engine GOOGLE® will find links to widgets.com. Potential customers following those links will see a proxy version of the widgets.com homepage. When the potential customer sends a http request for widgets.com the proxy server of the system 100 intercepts the request, analyzes the request to determine that the referral came from the search engine GOOGLE® and initiates a new request to widgets.com for the index page. Upon receiving the index page from widgets.com the system using the rule supplied by the widget manufacturer replaces the HTML code for the Widget company sales telephone number with the second advertising campaign sales telephone number. The modified webpage is then displayed to the potential customer. If this customer is interested in purchasing widgets, he will call the second campaign number since it is displayed as the widget company sales telephone number.

Similar to the second customer, potential customers who use any Internet search engine to find the keyword “widget” and following a link generated by the search engine pointing to the widgets.com URL will be shown the widgets Company homepage with the third advertising campaign telephone number listed as the sales number.

Upon calling the phone number displayed to them, the potential clients will access the system 100, will proceed through the phone flow 500 and the call will be transferred to the widget client's sales department in the normal course of business. The system logs the data for each incoming phone call. In particular, the system 100 logs the particular advertising campaign each potential customer called.

After a period of time, the widget client can access the real time reports generated by the system 100 to determine the efficacy of each of the advertising campaigns he has initiated as set forth in FIGS. 7-12.

It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes could be made to the embodiments described above without departing from the broad inventive concept thereof. It is understood, therefore, that this invention is not limited to the particular embodiments disclosed, but it is intended to cover modifications within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for measuring the efficacy of an advertising campaign conducted by an advertiser, comprising: a server which receives a request to present an advertisement to an Internet user, provides the requested advertisement via the Internet, and inserts into the provided advertisement a telephone number, wherein said telephone number is selected from a plurality of telephone numbers available to the server on the basis of information identifying a source of the request encoded in said request; a telephone interface for receiving calls made to said telephone number; a call handling system connected with the telephone interface for processing said calls and for recording data relating to said calls; and a report generator connected with said call handling system, and configured to retrieve said data, generate reports, and to provide access to said reports to the advertiser.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein said system further comprises: a database configured to store said plurality of telephone numbers and to permit said advertiser to, assign said telephone number to the advertising campaign.
 3. The system of claim 2 wherein said database is further configured to permit said advertiser to assign a second telephone number to a second advertising campaign, and wherein said server is configured to identify one of the telephone number and the second telephone number on the basis of information encoded in the request identifying the associated campaign. 